The unemployment rate in the top of the south is at its highest in 13 years.

Statistics New Zealand's latest Household Labour Force Survey is out, with a 5.9 per cent unemployment rate in the Tasman, Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast region for the March quarter.

This represents 6100 unemployed people and compares to a national unemployment rate of 6.7 per cent.

It has not been that high in the top of the south since the December quarter in 1999, when the unemployment rate reached 6.4 per cent.

The unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent at the same time last year.

Who to believe?

Statistics NZ doesn't really have any reason to misrepresent unemployment figures when it says the annual change is +3.1% and there are now 160,000 unemployed... unlike Paula Bennett who has a history of cherry picking what data she misrepresents.